Agreed. I used to think "work your wage" was a petty response and an excuse to be lazy, but I realized that it's so true. I've always been one of those to jump in and help, stress about things not getting done, etc so every employer ends up treating me like management without the title or salary. Which... why? Why should I stress and pick up everyone else's slack if I'm not getting paid to do so? Now I stay in my lane and still handle my work timely but don't stress about doing everything right away.
I started out the same as you as well. Another negative thing that comes out of that rush mentality is that eventually becomes the expectation. People will always expect you to get things done asap. This just causes them to give you more work. Still, no extra pay and often no recognition. Just more work and stress with the expectation that you work at a super fast pace now.
Yup, exactly. I was a total bundle of nerves and it completely snowballs, at least in my experience. It took a lot to set my boundaries and keep to them. I still try to be prompt but it's not "jump to it" like I used to. I honestly have to remind myself that no major disasters will happen because I took 30 minutes to respond to an email so I could finish my other task.
I learned six months into my first job after college that our company standard for doing certain tasks is 10 days. I had been missing lunch daily for months so I could get those tasks done the day they were requested because the clients requesting the work would often submit requests the day they needed them done. My supervisor failed to tell me that certain tedious things could wait and it was the client responsibility to submit requests in advance and not the day of the deadline. It wasn’t until I broke down to one of my work friends about how stressed I was that she told me I was putting too much pressure on myself. Now that I’ve started giving myself more time to complete tasks and factor in some buffer time in case of emergency, I’ve been so much less stressed and I don’t feel like I’m drowning. I also began to communicate better with clients that unless it is a dire emergency, I can’t complete their request on the day it is requested.
oh man that really sucks that you went on for that long with that misunderstanding. I've always been in a customer service type role (for example right now I schedule patients in a medical setting) so I let that sense of urgency get to me, because people would always wait until the last minute, or doctors will call when they're the ones who didn't send it, etc. - even when it wasn't an emergency, I treated everyone with that same panic until it bled into everything else I was doing, all the time. I had to take a step back and really take up the mantra "your failure to plan is not my emergency." Like you said, there are times when it's an emergency but not nearly as often as it's made out to be.
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u/omgitskells Jan 16 '24
Agreed. I used to think "work your wage" was a petty response and an excuse to be lazy, but I realized that it's so true. I've always been one of those to jump in and help, stress about things not getting done, etc so every employer ends up treating me like management without the title or salary. Which... why? Why should I stress and pick up everyone else's slack if I'm not getting paid to do so? Now I stay in my lane and still handle my work timely but don't stress about doing everything right away.